I’ve been reading through a ton of posts on DrivePool, and getting really close to installing and using it as my main Plex data drive. I’ve been using Windows storage spaces with parity, but its unbearably slow and it keeps dieing on me. I suspect 1 or multiple bad hard drives, but there’s no way to check the individual hard drives within Windows storage spaces. Does DrivePool allow testing of individual hard drives? It seems it can automatically spot bad hard drives, does that mean it can spot bad sectors and automatically repair too? If it does I’m buying today!
Any cons to DrivePool? I plan to use it to store ALL my data… documents, videos, music… I plan to use it as my OneDrive sync folder too. Any issues that I need to be aware of?
The only con that I have run into is that you absolutely must not store the Plex database in the pool. It is great for all your media but the database that Plex uses gets screwed up real easy if it is in the pool.
Also be aware that the duplication feature is NOT a backup. It is redundancy and it is great at that but redundancy is not a backup.
I have been running DrivePool for several years and now I up to 50 tb of pooled drives and I have never lost a file. I have had a couple of drives fail but I just simply replaced the failed drive and DrivePool reduplicated the files that were on the failed drive. Even my use of Plex was never hindered by the loss of a drive.
I love DrivePool, I have tried a traditional raid but found it cumbersome and I found that the fact that all the files stored in DrivePool are simple Windows files and therefore are accessible on any hardware that supports standard Windows files.
StableBit also has a drive scanner tool that is designed to work with DrivePool. I do not use the scanner but I have tried it and it works well.
There are very few pieces of software that have given me less trouble that DrivePool and not one that has shown the reliability that DrivePool has.
I have no idea about using it as a sync folder for OneDrive but that is a task I would think would be problematic for much of the same reasons that the Plex database gets screwed up in the pool.
Awesome, thanks. Any issues with Plex DVR, or tools like MCEBuddy, comskip, handbrake, etc when encoding/converting video files?
When a drive is failing does DrivePool repair the drive or just mark the specific failed drive (with Serial Number I assume) and tell you to replace it? This one is big for me because I’ve had Windows storage spaces dieing on me repeatedly over the past 9 months and I need something that is going to help identify the issue. Storage spaces just says the drives are healthy even though they aren’t.
